Correspondents say Qusair has strategic value for both sides. If the government retakes it, it would ensure access from the capital to the coast.

For the rebels, control of Qusair means they can come and go from neighbouring Lebanon, says the BBC's Jim Muir, in Beirut.

Syrian opposition activists said government air strikes and heavy shelling on Sunday had killed at least 30 people in Qusair, including 16 rebel fighters.

State TV said that troops had taken over buildings in the centre, including the town hall, and were now chasing out "terrorists" - its term for rebel fighters.

It said at least 70 rebels had been killed in the advance, but there is no independent confirmation.

Earlier, Rami Abdel Rahman, of UK-based activist group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said troops were advancing from the south and Hezbollah fighters were "playing a central role".

"Soldiers and tanks are trying to advance into the town, the rebel forces are attempting to push them back," he told AFP news agency.

There is no word from either side on civilian casualties.

There are also reports that hundreds of Lebanese Sunni militants have joined the fight on the rebels' side, our correspondent says.

In another development, the Lebanese National News Agency reported that eight Soviet-made Grad rockets had struck hit the north-eastern town of Hermel.

The agency said the short-range missiles were presumably fired from Syria but had caused no damage or casualties.

News of the assault on Qusair came as Mr Assad vowed to continue the "fight against terrorism".

In his first interview since the US and Russia announced plans for a peace conference, Mr Assad told an Argentine newspaper that the meeting should focus on stopping the flow of money and weapons to "terrorists".

He rejected suggestions he might stand down, saying a captain did not abandon his ship and presidential elections next year would determine his future.

The conference, scheduled for June, will try to persuade the Syrian government and opposition to accept a deal, including an immediate cessation of violence.

The plan, based on a UN-backed proposal, would see the establishment of a transitional government that could include officials serving under President Assad and members of the opposition.

However, neither the Syrian government nor the opposition has yet made a commitment to attend the meeting.

The top US general described Russia's decision to send missiles to Syria as "ill-timed and unfortunate".

Gen Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the shipment would "embolden the regime and prolong the suffering".

Without confirming the shipment, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the supply of missiles to Syria did not break any international rules.

Russia, a key ally of President Assad, has a small naval maintenance facility at the Syrian deep-water port of Tartus.

Last week, the BBC's Ian Pannell was shown video and eyewitness testimony that appear to corroborate allegations of chemical weapons' use in the Syrian town of Saraqeb.

Turkey has given US President Barack Obama what it says is evidence of chemical weapons use in Syria.

The US had warned that such a development would be a "red line" for possible intervention.

But Mr Obama said more specific details were needed about alleged chemical attacks.

Russia has consistently opposed any international intervention in Syria, along the lines of the Libyan conflict in 2011.

The UN said last week that the death toll in Syria had reached at least 80,000 since the conflict began in March 2011. Activists said the number could be as high as 120,000.

When will the resources of Qatar and Saudi Arabia run dry, and the rebels are rolled up?

Will the Turks let that happen?

What was the Turkish role, in Benghazi?Why were they not called upon, to support US personnel at the Compound.

No hot LZ night insertion required.

The remarks were perhaps the most important and telling of the entire hearing since they address a possible motive behind the jihadist attacks.

Yet Clinton’s answers were largely unreported by U.S. news media.

The exchange on the subject took place with Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.

Paul asked Clinton: “Is the U. S. involved with any procuring of weapons, transfer of weapons, buying, selling, anyhow transferring weapons to Turkey out of Libya?

“To Turkey?” Clinton asked. “I will have to take that question for the record. Nobody has ever raised that with me.”

Continued Paul: “It’s been in news reports that ships have been leaving from Libya and that may have weapons, and what I’d like to know is the annex that was close by, were they involved with procuring, buying, selling, obtaining weapons, and were any of these weapons being transferred to other countries, any countries, Turkey included?”

Clinton replied, “Well, senator, you’ll have to direct that question to the agency that ran the annex. I will see what information is available.”

“You’re saying you don’t know?” asked Paul.

“I do not know,” Clinton said. “I don’t have any information on that.”Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/01/media-ignore-hillarys-bombshell-benghazi-claim/#FUBgIMB7vKW4eZ0y.99

While our 'Friends' @ FOX News ......... "don't even address the military capabilities of our United Nations ally Turkey, who (has) forces available a similarly short flight away." Fox News has learned that Turkey had a number of embassy staff in town the night of the attack and that the Turkish consul general met with Ambassador Stevens in Benghazi the night he and the three other Americans were killed.

One source asked, "Were the Turks not warned? What forces were available from our ally Turkey? Especially since they had officials there in Benghazi also and had to be concerned …

The FOX report tells us that security consultants were ringing the alarm, while the Turks were still in the compound, but did the attack did not begin until after they had left. About an hour after they left.

That's the cover up, the rest, the reason for the Cover Story.The Cover Story, full of holes, because it has always been a piece of fiction.

Folks see the holes, the 'symptoms', and think they've found evidence of the cause.

Folks see the holes, the 'symptoms', and think they've found evidence of the cause.

What did General P know ...... when did he know it?

What you are talking about is old news speculated about in news stories on Benghazi since day one. Would it surprise anyone to know that we were trying to arrange for transfer of Libyan arms to Syrian rebels through Turkey when we are likley doing the same thing through Jordan? Old news.

You are interested in a cover up of what was going on in Benghazi, rat. I am interested in why four Americans were killed as the result of adequate security requested but denied.

Everyone who has testified including Nordstrom, the State guy responsible for security on the ground in Libya, have stated that security at the Benghazi facility was State Department responsibility. The CIA annex was a mile or more away.

Hicks, the acting HOM, after Stevens death indicated that one of the reasons Stevens was in Benghazi was to try assure it was being upgraded to full consulate level as requested by Hillary Clinton. He also mentioned there was some urgency due to the fact that a certain traunch of funds that could be allocated for that upgrade would be expiring at the end of the month. So far, no one has denied that.

The State Department clearly didn't want the security warnings they received mentioned; otherwise, there would have been no re-writing of the nonclas intelligence report mentioned in the e-mails. This could be viewed in two separate ways. One, that State was trying to cover their asses on security related mistakes, or two, as you have suggested they were actually covering for a classified CIA operation. However, if the latter is true, it's not a matter of what did Hillary or Petraeus knew and when. The whole fiasco then falls into the lap of the White House and the President.

Libya had just come through a civil war and coup d'etat, rebel militias including al Queda were everywhere, the central government was weak, arms caches were all over the place, and the State Department was working with the CIA on an arms deal to supply the Sryrian rebels and the President didn't know about it? Doesn't make much sense, unless he of course was skipping his daily intelligence briefings, he had forgone meetings with the NSC, or he was planning another vacation.

Issa will continue his hearings. Someone was responsible for the lax security. We'll see where it leads.

Because what they are covering up is what was going on, in Benghazi, prior to the attack. Not the 'Who struck John' follow up to the events.

Again, you like the GOP, are concentrating on the cover-up. I am concetrating on the 4 dead Americans who died because of adequate security requested but denied, security Charlotte Lamb and other State Department bureaucrats told them wasn't necessary despite CIA warnings of the deteriorating security situation in both Benghazi and Tripoli.

The responsibility for securing US assets in Benghazi, that compound included, fell to the CIA.

There is no argument that the CIA didn't have some responsibility considering that the local militia they had vetted quickly faded away when the fighting started. This has yet to be fully explored in the hearings. However, the help the State Department personal in Tripoli were asking for was increased U.S. troop presence as well as hiring additional permanent contract specialists. This was refused despite that fact that the central government itself was in no position to provide the security we would expect from most countries. Instead, they offered us a list of militias they considered trustworthy or at least more trustworthy than others.

The real reason the people in Tripoli and Benghazi didn't get what they wanted and instead had to settle for unreliable locals can be expressed in one word, 'normalization', the U.S. policy to reduce security personnel and instead depend on local assets, a policy that was questionable given the unsettled nature of Libya at the time as well as the 230 security incidents that had taken place in the previous year.

If the Benghazi affair was the result of a joint CIA/State program, then the ultimate responsibility rests at the White House.

A. No... but yes, not explicitly. There is no verbiage in the Texas Constitution, the US Constitution, or the Texas Annexation Agreement that expressly grants the State of Texas the right to secede from the Union. However, the US Constitution is silent on the issue, neither prohibiting it or allowing it, for any state. With that in mind, the 10th Amendment to the US Constitution expressly reserves ALL POWERS not granted to the federal government, to the states. So, by virtue of the fact that the US Constitution does not expressly prohibit secession, nor does it expressly give the federal government the power to prevent a state from seceding, ALL states have the right to secede. Think of secession like a divorce. The parties are going their separate ways through a declaration from one of the parties, that they no longer wish to remain in the marriage. This is all it takes to secede: a state congressional declaration.

Q-2. Can Texas be broken up into 5 states?

A. Yes. The Annexation agreement that resulted in Texas becoming a state in 1845 allows Texas to be broken up into 5 total states. Hmmm... maybe we don't need to secede. If we broke up into 5 states we would have 5 times the influence in the US Senate.

One day General Bunk says it's all about the oil, the next day Bunk says it is all about the Abrahamic religions, the next day he says it is all about the water.....and today adds every Israeli is a Palestinian, when yesterday he said the Israelis were all European invaders/colonialists into the 'Arc of Instability'.

Most heads would spin at all this shit, but Bunk handles it well, he being a genius of the Scot Fitzgerald type, able to keep contradictory ideas in his head at the same time and not becoming upset by it all.

Perhaps it slips his mind that there is a belligerent little entity ensconced in the Levant, and that there are quite a few high ranking US officials, past and present, who share duel nationality with this aggressive little fellow.

AnonymousSun May 19, 06:13:00 PM EDTPerhaps it slips his mind that there is a belligerent little entity ensconced in the Levant, and that there are quite a few high ranking US officials, past and present, who share duel nationality with this aggressive little fellow.

Perhaps you are just jealous that Israel is a great nation, no matter it's small size?

Perhaps you'd like to list " quite a few high ranking US officials, past and present, who share duel nationality"?

Perhaps we all KNOW that your false claims of duel loyalty are just false canards. Specious and salacious but lacking in substance.

Our very own General Bunker laments: desert ratSun May 19, 08:03:00 PM EDTThat it is a giant amongst midgets, well, that's beer muscles for you.Great Nation?Delusional, is more likely.I'll have to read quot, today.See which version has been doing most of the writing.Seems this last post was by the schizophrenic quot.

I want to thank you for allowing me the opportunity to tell all the world on what a great nation, among nations, Israel was, is and will be.

Some small facts.

Israel sits one 1/900th of the middle east. The arab occupation is the other 899/900th.

Israel GNP is great than the 21 arab nations, including their oil sales.

General Bunker continues: desert ratSun May 19, 08:10:00 PM EDTAuthoritative states like Alabama and Mississippi, back in 1948.Israel, today.Striving for greatest, amongst midgets, and falling short.Barely able to attain and maintain equivalency.

Love it General Bunker.

Please show us the parallel to 1948 Alabama and Mississippi?

20% of Israel are Arabs. Arabic is a national language as well as Hebrew.

They enjoy full citizenship and access to all universities. Arab sit on the Supreme Court, serve in the army, vote, are allowed to buy businesses or land anywhere within the state of Israel.

Miss Israel last year was an Arab gal.

Now tell us General Bunk how Israel is is like the Jim Crow laws?

Explain your accusations without cutting and pasting from the Hebrew Haters Club website

It's innovations, inventions and patients equal none other if you adjust for it's tiny physical size.

We shall go into those great lifesavers to the world very soon General Bunk. I am sure without those Israel inventions in technology you an your family most likely would not have survived this long in our modern world, let alone the computers and cell phones you take for granted.

Israel is a giant of a nation and a people when compared to the rest of the world, Only America stands above it, but let's fact facts, America is a thousand times larger and has a population of 300 million plus.

They were no where to be seen in the last two wars the US fought in the region.The Israeli hid under their beds, while the US took out the 'Bad Guy" in the region.The one that had been paying $25,000 to the families of killers of Israeli.

A nut softer than Iran, but one much to tough for the Israeli to crack.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama will address the legality of his administration’s controversial drone program during a speech this week.

A White House official says Obama will also address other counterterrorism policies, including stalled efforts to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center.

Obama pledged in his State of the Union address earlier this year to make the secret drone program more "transparent" to the public. The official says Obama was ready to deliver Thursday's speech last month, but it was postponed amid hunger strike protests at Guantanamo and other controversies that have consumed the White House.

The official was authorized to speak about the speech only on background because Obama has yet to deliver it. The speech plans were first reported by The Washington Post.

PRINCETON, NJ -- Slim majorities of Americans are very or somewhat closely following the situations involving the Internal Revenue Service (54%) and the congressional hearings on the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and its aftermath (53%) -- comparatively low based on historical measures of other news stories over the last two decades.

The big question of the day: What does it take to get the attention of the US public?

We do make it so very easy for our rulers and masters. I am sure you will all agree.

The main thing to understand is that Obama continues, according to CNN/ORC, to enjoy a 53% approval rating.

Vox Sheeplei

In the following article, the authors make the point that American attitudes on major issue like going to war are influenced by foreign opinions. However, what I took from it was that media bias, who they choose to quote, what sources they choose to print, seem to drive the opinions of the sheeple.

In our analysis of every nightly network television story about Iraq in the eight months before the war – 1,434 stories in all – Guardino and I found that Democrats accounted for just 4 percent of all statements in the news. Other domestic sources who opposed the war, such as protesters and anti-war groups, made up an even tinier fraction. By contrast, Bush administration officials arguing for military action constituted 28 percent of all statements in the news. When we looked at national newspaper coverage, we found the same thing.

A we've seen with the Gosnell story, the MSM picks and chooses the stories they are comfortable with to the exclusion of the others. The sheeple are often forced to make judgments on limited information.

It's sad when you have to quote Robert Byrd as a voice of reason. Speaking of Iraq,

Of course, some liberal Democrats, such as the late-Sen. Robert Byrd (W.Va.), were vociferous in their opposition. “This is no small conflagration that we contemplate,” Byrd said on the Senate floor in February 2003. “It is not going to be a video game.But the public hardly heard any of it.

Low information voters...what a freakin' Godsend! About the IRS - considering so few Democrats other than their party elite actually pay taxes - it is no wonder they find the whole IRS thing very MEH! So, one party will continue, through their tax dollars, to subsidize the other party through their tax dollar dependency. And it will be the simple folks actually paying in who come under scrutiny while the simpletons taking out get off with EBT cards and free phones. Man, Democrat voters are expensive to have around.

ABC News' Jonathan Karl expressed "regret" over his reporting on Benghazi in a statement on Sunday.

Karl, the network's White House correspondent, recently provoked controversy after his exclusive report that quoted emails which allegedly showed the Obama administration made numerous edits to, and scrubbed information from the talking points on Benghazi. He said that ABC News had reviewed emails in question, but it was later revealed that the quotes were actually from a source claiming to have summarized the emails, and were misleading.

On Sunday's "Reliable Sources," Howard Kurtz relayed a statement from the ABC News correspondent: "Clearly, I regret the email was quoted incorrectly and I regret that it's become a distraction from the story, which still entirely stands. I should have been clearer about the attribution. We updated our story immediately."

Guest David Shuster came down hard on Karl on Sunday, saying, "The story was wrong. The attribution was wrong. And he's still not characterizing the source as a Republican source, even though other news organizations are already doing that. So I just think the problems continue for ABC News in all of this."

It was the Republicans who put out the story about the video from LA causing all the trouble at Benghazi.

Should have guessed.

And I'll bet that when the smoke clears we will find it was the Republicans who ordered the IRS to investigate themselves, and other of their political kissing cousins, like the Tea Party and Libertarians.

SEIA estimates that photovoltaic (PV) energy will account for about 1.1 gigawatts of new military PV capacity added in the five-year period from 2012 to 2017, which is about equal to the entire installed global solar capacity in 2000.

In terms of domestic facilities, the move to solar and other forms of locally sourced, renewable energy makes bottom line sense for the military. It provides a more secure supply chain that is buffered against grid disruptions, it opens the potential for a long term downward trend in energy costs, and it helps to insulate the Pentagon’s budget from fuel price spikes and supply issues related to global forces beyond its control.

That last point is a key one, even without sequester-related cuts. The Pentagon has a gigantic budget but not an infinite one, and when fuel prices spike up that cuts into the fuel budget for training and readiness.

Solar Power On The Battlefield

In addition to a thorough rundown of domestic solar installations, the SEIA report will also give you a good grasp of the important role that solar power is beginning to play in forward operations overseas.

Combined with energy storage, solar power provides off-grid, portable on-the-go energy generation capability that is less noisy and noxious than diesel generators. Solar power is mechanically more reliable than diesel-fueled generators, and the military has been moving swiftly from stationary solar set-ups to solar-in-a-suitcase kits that can be set up and broken down on the fly.

Read more at http://cleantechnica.com/2013/05/17/u-s-military-solar-power-is-outlined-in-major-new-report/#uerMEUHLDWmBZVvd.99

Solar canopies do double duty as sun shades, providing a moveable force with more bang for the buck. That goes double for solar-in-a-backpack kits and other forms of wearable solar devices that help cut down on the heavy load of batteries that ground forces typically slog about.

Solar-powered charging devices also help cut down on the whole portable battery supply chain issue, including disposal, which overall has been described as a “logistical nightmare,”

A New Definition Of National Defense

Petroleum dependency exposes US forces to alliances that are not otherwise in the nation’s best interest and put our troops at risk. In more direct terms, as the SEIA report points out, it literally costs lives when fuel convoys expose troops and other personnel to attack.

The converse is that renewable forms of energy like solar power saves lives, and you can see the domestic reflection of that in the Army’s Net Zero initiative. The immediate goal is just what it says, to achieve net zero energy, water and waste at Army facilities in the US, which includes transitioning from grid-supplied energy to on site or hyper-local sources of renewable energy.

Read more at http://cleantechnica.com/2013/05/17/u-s-military-solar-power-is-outlined-in-major-new-report/#uerMEUHLDWmBZVvd.99

>>Sometimes, we think of power in terms of “following the leader,” Nichols said, which focuses on a president's formal power as the nation's chief executive, the free world's symbolic leader and his political party's de facto head. “Furthermore, we know that ‘knowledge is power,' which focuses us on the power a president has in exploiting his personal reputation as an expert in an area.”

But presidents also wield power by influencing those who deeply admire, strongly identify with or highly respect them. This is referent power, which focuses on ability to exploit others' trust.

Celebrities — with no formal power and little expertise — wield influence through referent power; some people feel so close to and trustful of celebrities that they act upon their perceptions of what a celebrity wants them to do.

“To be clear, referent power does not work through order, command or threat,” Nichols explained. “Instead, it works through suggestion and the creativity of the fawning admirer.”<<

>>The incorrect versions – and they were inaccurate quotes – were not generated by GOP operatives. They were extracted by ABC’s Jon Karl from notes taken by attendees at the original meeting when the White House refused to initially allow anyone to have copies which could have been used for....

....Were there differences? Yes, and we should be careful in providing an accurate record of what was written, so older versions should be expunged and replaced. But does this change the essential testimony being offered from the e-mails? Not to speak of. And what differences there are were not generated by the GOP, but by quick note taking which was picked up by Jon Karl. Just keep that in mind as the White House continues to try to squirm their way out of this. full referencing. ABC went with the notes, being the closest thing anyone had to an official record, and the GOP worked off those notes<<

In September 2012, civil unrest, large scale protests and demonstrations as well as violent attacks – some of which were in reaction to an anti-Islamic video and cartoons - targeted U.S. missions and schools overseas including in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Sudan, and Yemen.

This from a worldwide alert at Travel.State.Gov

http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/pa/pa_4787.html

While the wording allows them to say they didn't really say Libya was the result of the video, the obvious weasel-wording is evident to me and likely any who have taken an interest in the subject.

Also, under Trave.State.Gov in a blip specific to Libyan travel, I notice that while a June, 2012 bombing in Benghazi is reported there is no mention of our ambassador being killed in September.

There certainly was a spontaneous protest in Benghazi.General P testified to that, before Congress on 13SEP2012.

As reported in the WSJ ...

Sept. 13, Thursday:

Then-CIA Director David Petraeus presented the CIA's initial findings to the Senate Intelligence Committee. His conclusions mirrored that morning's intelligence reporting. He said the attack began "spontaneously" following the protest in Cairo over the video. He also discussed the reports of involvement of Ansar al-Sharia and the al Qaeda affiliate and called the assault a terrorist attack.

For those pushing for us to establish a no-fly zone over Syria in hopes of pushing Assad out, Libya should be an object lesson.

We attacked MQ purportedly to save lives in Benghazi. Now we have been driven out of Benghazi and it looks like Tripoli might be next.

How well has that Western intervention worked out in Libya? Starting well over a year ago, Western nations all pulled out of Benghazi — the city the intervention was supposed to protect — after it became clear to all but the US that radical Islamist “militias” had seized control of the city and region. The US pulled out of Benghazi only after a terrorist attack by Ansar al-Sharia somehow caught the State Department and White House by surprise … on the anniversary of 9/11. Afterward, the nations that staged the military decapitation of Moammar Qaddafi all fell back to Tripoli, where security could be better maintained.

The CIA offered a revised version of the talking points, and the officials from the White House and other agencies provided final approval early in the afternoon.

Top officials discussed the changes at the White House.

Michael Morell, then CIA deputy director and now acting director, spoke with the CIA station chief in Tripoli, who expressed concern that the agency's reporting was off the mark. The station chief said there was no protest ongoing at the time of the attack, and said he didn't think the attack was spontaneous. Mr. Morell asked the chief to summarize his views in an email so the analysts at Langley could evaluate his take along with more than a dozen other internal intelligence reports, Mr. Morell later told lawmakers.

Believe any story you want.

Sept. 16, Sunday

The CIA's Tripoli station chief sent an email about the issue of protests in Benghazi, but the agency didn't immediately change its assessment. Some former officials criticized that decision. At the time, analysts at CIA gave greater weight to multiple reports from the scene that pointed to a protest. The Tripoli station chief wasn't in Benghazi during the attack.

Based on fresh information, the CIA changed its assessment to conclude that a protest did not directly precede the attack. The agency provided that information to top national-security officials at the White House.Oct. 11

The State Department acknowledged there was no protest before the attack.

Here, there, anywhere.

Which of the revisions is accurate, if any?

What kind of lasers did the CIA have on the roof of the annex building?

In the back-and-forth at the CIA, the references to al Qaeda became a subject of acute debate. Some warned that naming al Qaeda could expose classified information and compromise U.S. efforts to gather more intelligence about the activities of the suspected militants involved.

After rounds of bureaucratic exchanges, the CIA officials seeking to remove al Qaeda won the argument, and officials agreed to retain the umbrella term "extremists" but drop the mention of al Qaeda.

Late in the afternoon of Sept. 14, CIA officials sent the draft of the talking points to other government agencies, including the Director of National Intelligence, the White House, the State Department and the FBI.

The White House and the State Department asked that the word "consulate" and be dropped, suggesting the talking points say "diplomatic post" instead. The State Department did not consider the Benghazi a full-fledged consulate.

I've asked you this before. What makes you think that the Ambassador's visit to Benghazi was 'leaked' or even had to be leaked since there was nothing secret about the visit itself, that is, if you can believe the State Department?

Have you seen some reporting along these lines that would make you ask?

At the time, analysts at CIA gave greater weight to multiple reports from the scene that pointed to a protest.

There's a ball game on right now but when I get time I will try to dig up the article that stated the CIA analysts were basing their view that it was a spontaneous protest on the basis of the numerous MSM reports that picked up that false meme and flew with it.

If this is the quality of our CIA 'analysts', heck I want that job. I could sit around all day reading the paper and watching TV and then offering the stories back as I do my 'analyzing' thing.

>>>A story in the Washington Post yesterday about the Internal Revenue Service’s Cincinnati office, which does most of the agency’s nonprofit auditing, clearly contradicted earlier reports that the agency’s targeting of Tea Party groups was the result of rogue agents.

The Post story anonymously quoted a staffer in Cincinnati as saying they only operate on directives from headquarters:

As could be expected, the folks in the determinations unit on Main Street have had trouble concentrating this week. Number crunchers, whose work is nonpolitical, don’t necessarily enjoy the spotlight, especially when the media and the public assume they’re engaged in partisan villainy.

“We’re not political,’’ said one determinations staffer in khakis as he left work late Tuesday afternoon. “We people on the local level are doing what we are supposed to do. . . . That’s why there are so many people here who are flustered. Everything comes from the top. We don’t have any authority to make those decisions without someone signing off on them. There has to be a directive.”

The staff member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of losing his job, said that the determinations unit is competent and without bias, that it grouped together conservative applications “for consistency’s sake” — so one application did not sail through while a similar one was held up in review. This consistency is paramount in the review of all applications, according to Ronald Ran, an estate-tax lawyer who worked for 37 years in the IRS’s Cincinnati office.

This pretty plainly contradicts the story coming out of the IRS that rogue agents in Cincinnati were responsible:

News of (acting IRS commissioner Steve) Miller’s resignation followed revelations that the IRS has identified two “rogue” employees in the agency’s Cincinnati office as being principally responsible for the “overly aggressive” handling of requests by conservative groups for tax-exempt status, a congressional source told CNN.

Miller said the staffers have already been disciplined, according to another source familiar with Miller’s discussions with congressional investigators. The second source said Miller emphasized that the problem with IRS handling of tax-exempt status for tea party groups was not limited to these two employees.

In related news, I also noted how the Post’s story on the Cincinnati office also appears to contradict what Miller told Congress this week about how many auditors the IRS has covering nonprofit groups. Miller said the figure was between 140-200, but the Post story puts the figure at 900. The Post doesn’t source the figure, but presumably that also came from people the reporters talked with in Cincinnati.<<<

You guys have a problem. You hate Obama so much that you just can't accept that the rest of the American people kind of like him.

You keep thinking that if they just "knew what you know" they would hate him, too; but, it's not true. They do know as much about him as you do, and they Have decided that it's you people that they don't much care for.

The Pubs ran into the same problem with Bill Clinton. They tried to impeach him, and got slaughtered in the 6 year election - a very rare happenstance.

Two elite FBI agents were killed Friday during a training exercise off the coast of Virginia Beach.

Veteran Special Agents Christopher Lorek and Stephen Shaw were killed during an exercise that involved a helicopter. The accident happened aboard a Navy Military Sealift Command Ship, which the FBI leases from the Navy, sources told WAVY-TV. The FBI was tight-lipped about the nature of the accident.

They had the ball, the commo, the weapons and the shooters to use them,in Benghazi.That is well known, now.

The CIA operation, it needed the night.

Which goes back to the first version of the 'Story', where the CIA folk at the annex were told to 'Stand Down'. Then, in a revised version of the story, they were ordered to move to the compound and evacuate the US personnel.

Something different to chew on:"I think government entanglement with religion is a very dangerous thing," he said in a telephone interview Thursday. "When you go into a state park cabin and the only piece of religious literature there is a Protestant Bible, that suggests the government's endorsed that particular perspective."

At the time, analysts at CIA gave greater weight to multiple reports from the scene that pointed to a protest.

There's a ball game on right now but when I get time I will try to dig up the article that stated the CIA analysts were basing their view that it was a spontaneous protest on the basis of the numerous MSM reports that picked up that false meme and flew with it.

If this is the quality of our CIA 'analysts', heck I want that job. I could sit around all day reading the paper and watching TV and then offering the stories back as I do my ‘analyzing’ thing.

>>A huge thank-you to Doug Ross of the invaluable Director Blue website for compiling a complete timeline of the IRS scandal. So many lies and misleading statements have already been made that the American public must evaluate Obama administration representations clasely, and compare them to the known record.<<

At least 10 policemen have been killed after unidentified gunmen attacked a police station in the Iraqi city of Rawah, northwest of Baghdad, police officials say.

The attack took place on Sunday evening in the city, located about 320km northwest of Baghdad, the Iraqi capital.

The base commander was among those killed, a police source told Al Jazeera.

Qais al-Rawi, the head of the area's local council, meanwhile, said that gunmen had killed and wounded the police officers in an attack on their station, and that they also assaulted and set fire to an army position.

There were 15 soldiers and an officer at the position, Rawi said, and their fate is unknown.

There have been a number of attacks in recent weeks on security forces in Anbar province, home to Ramadi and Fallujah, two centres of Sunni protests that broke out almost five months ago.

Up to 10 people were kidnapped in Anbar on Saturday, according to security officials.

Tensions between the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, a Shia Muslim, and Iraqi Sunni Muslims, have been running high in recent months, with the latter accusing authorities of marginalising and targeting their community.

The government has made some concessions, such as freeing prisoners and raising the salaries of Sunni anti-Al-Qaeda fighters, but protests against Maliki’s government have persisted.

With 10 years of extra-judicial drone strikes. Would it be so hard to imagine where these “new elements” of terror — the freshly minted martyrs and the al Qaeda-affiliated groups in Yemen, Pakistan, North Africa and beyond – were coming from?

“I think we’re living in a world where we are not going to be immune to the payback for some of the things that we’ve done. And unless—unless we, as a society, completely re-imagine what an actual national security policy would look like, one that recognizes the dignity of other people around the world or the rights of people to practice their religion or determine their form of government, unless we’re willing to re-imagine how we approach the world, we’re doomed to have a repeat of a 9/11-type attack or something that’s smaller-scale but constant,” Scahill noted in a recent interview with Democracy Now!

* * *“Iraq,” Scahill wrote in Dirty Wars, “would serve as a laboratory for creating a new kill/capture machine, centered on JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command), run by (Gen. Stanley) McChrystal and accountable to no one but a small group of White House and Pentagon insiders.”

With sources cultivated over years, Scahill is able to piece together a timeline in which McChrystal, a career special forces officer with extraordinary “stomach and stamina for the fight,” as well as one of the Pentagon’s “fellow travelers in the great crusade against Islam,” is paired with a messianic White House that with a roll of then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s ball point pen, was able facilitate not only JSOC’s new lead in all counter-terror operations, but its ability to operate “and hit targets” outside the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.

What happens, as richly told in the book, is what could only be described in biblical terms: something like the four horsemen of the apocalypse, searching, seeking and vanquishing for the ultimate cleansing of the world.

JSOC was built up in Iraq and Afghanistan to conduct surveillance, interrogations and killing, parallel to (and often sidelining) the CIA and the conventional military, but without the congressional oversight that bound those other institutions. Soon, thanks to the Bush White House, JSOC was independently establishing “liaison offices” across the Middle East for the manhunt, no permission necessary.

…As a result, Al Qaeda, led by Abu Masab al Zarqawi, bloomed and flourished in Iraq and contributed to the ensuing civil war. “Although General Petraeus would be credited years later with ‘winning’ the Iraq War through a troop ‘surge,’ he had also, along with Zarqawi, helped to destroy Iraq and create a sectarian bloodbath that would live on well past the U.S occupation,” charges Scahill.

Dirty Wars doesn’t dwell on Iraq – Scahill takes full advantage of his field reporting in Somalia to turn over the rocks there, as well as the real story behind the drone deaths of American Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son in 2011 (including interviews with family), and the hunt for al Qaeda in Pakistan.

Today, the Global War on Terror has been institutionalized by the Obama White House, “using drone, cruise missile and Special Ops raids,” in “a mission to kill its way to victory,” Scahill writes. “Future U.S presidents – Republican or Democratic – will inherit a streamlined process for assassinating enemies of America, perceived or real. They will inherit an executive branch with sweeping powers, rationalized under the banner of national security.”

Scahill surmises that, “no one can scientifically predict the future consequences” of the aforementioned activities. “But, from my experience in several undeclared war zones across the globe, it seems clear that the United States is helping to breed a new generation of enemies in Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan and throughout the Muslim world.”

Last week’s timing on the release of Dirty Wars – along with its accompanying award-winning documentary of the same name – serves as a opportune counterbalance to the prevailing narrative, that what happened in Boston was some unprovoked attack in the “struggle” against terror, which ignores America’s own role in that struggle all along.

There is no excusing the pain and fear the suspects in the case inflicted on Boston that day, but to deny reality is to simply perpetuate the cycle. Thanks to Scahill’s willingness to reach into dark places, we have one more tool with which to try and reverse it.

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Magnificent Ronald and the Founding Fathers of al Qaeda

“These gentlemen are the moral equivalents of America’s founding fathers.” — Ronald Reagan while introducing the Mujahideen leaders to media on the White house lawns (1985). During Reagan’s 8 years in power, the CIA secretly sent billions of dollars of military aid to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in a US-supported jihad against the Soviet Union. We repeated the insanity with ISIS against Syria.